The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

June 10, 2024

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Paris 1942 - Eva Traube is a graduate student at the Sorbonne when the Nazis begin to round up the Jews of Paris. Eva's father is arrested by the Nazis, but Eva and her mother escape to the Vichy area which was technically Free France. Eva begins to work with the French resistance, forging documents to help Jewish children escape to Switzerland. But the work becomes increasingly dangerous, and Eva soon finds herself immersed in more clandestine activities.

I was off World War II fiction for a while because there was SOOOOO much of it, but I'm glad I read this one. I really liked the story line and most of the characters, except for Eva's mother. The mother is beyond annoying - she ruined a lot of the book for me (partially because I could hear my own mother's voice in a lot of what she said). If you can, skip any scenes that focus on Eva's mother - I think the author could have left her out altogether without any detriment to the narrative, since Eva had plenty of challenges without her. Recommended to readers who enjoyed The Nightingale or the Alice Network.

Resistance fighters in France

The Postcard by Anne Berest

April 14, 2023

The Postcard by Anne Berest

In 2003, a Jewish woman living in Paris receives a postcard, bearing only the names of four family members who died at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. Years later, she tells her daughter Anne the story of her grandparents and about receiving the postcard. Anne becomes obsessed with tracking down the postcard's sender, exploring her family's history while also musing on what it means to be a Jew today as well as historically.

Part family history, part French history, part Jewish history, part mystery. This is a profoundly moving story of lost loves, survivors, and a family missing vital parts. Not an easy read, but one that will stay with the reader long after the book is finished. This title is sure to win literary prizes and appear on best-books-of-the-year lists. Highly recommended. 

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Prisoners at Auschwitz, the main death camp, where the author's family perished

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

October 14, 2019

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

In 1942, Lale (Ludwig) Eisenberg is deported from Slovakia to the Auschwitz-Birgenau concentration camp.  He begins as a laborer, but when the camp authorities learn that he speaks several language, he is put to work as assistant tattooist, tattooing numbers on newly arrived prisoners.  Mostly he keeps his head down but it becomes more difficult when he is required to starting tattooing numbers on young women, especially when he meets a girl named Gita, also from Slovakia.  One day, his friend the tattooist Pepan disappears and Lale finds himself “promoted” to head tattooist, a position that comes with better living quarters and extra food rations.  Despite his resolution to keep his head down and survive, after observing the guards’ brutality to the prisoners, Lale resolves to do all he can to help and protect Gita, his assistant Leon, and other friends in the camp.

It took me a while to get around to reading this one.  There have been so many books recently about World War II, with a lot of them focusing on the concentration camps (Mischling by Affinity Konar and Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, to name just two), and let's be honest, it's a depressing topic.  But it is an important topic.  Like so many novels about World War II, this novel is painful to read, but it is also full of hope.  Lale is determined to survive and doggedly plans a future for himself, inspiring others along the way to believe that they too will endure and come out of the camp alive.  I would have liked to know what happened to Leon, Cilka, Jakub, and others, but it fits with the story that there are loose ends.  So many were displaced in the war and lost in the camps that people just disappeared and their loved ones never found out what happened to them.  (Morris recently published a sequel, Cilka's Journey, which is almost pure fiction according to the real Cilka's family.)

There has been a certain amount of controversy about the historical basis of the story, including an error in the number assigned to Gita, the unavailability of penicillin in 1943, and the nature of the experiments that Mengele performed on prisoners.  As some of the Holocaust organizations and museums have pointed out, it is a novel based on one person's memories and recollections, and shouldn't be taken as historical fact.  That doesn't make it any less compelling to read.